The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [111]
Earthquake. Sun too bright. The sky looking like no sky I had ever seen. Noises, deafening roar. Everything quaking, trembling. The foul stench everywhere. Harder and harder to breathe. Rush upon rush, summing it all up.
“How far did you get?”
“I think it was somewhere round 1971.”
“1971! I don’t think I ever heard of someone making it that far. It must be some sort of record. You must have been about the only one left. Most of us gave up a long time ago. There didn’t seem to be much point in sticking around. It was all over.”
“There seemed to be others.”
“Think about it a minute. If there really were others around, what are you doing here? You must have had your suspicions that something was going on. Weren’t they more and more just reflections of yourself? It got lonely and so you decided to hang it up? That’s the way I figure it works. I don’t know for sure. I’m still trying to find out.”
“From time to time I figured something like that might be going on. I just thought it would be bad manners to call them on it.”
“1971? Jesus, are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“That’s amazing. I thought I was something making it to ’54.”
“I guess I was just trying to be polite.”
“I’m pretty sure there really wasn’t much of anybody left when you split. There was just about no one when I finally hung it up. Just a bunch of bodies people left around that sat around reflecting you in funny ways. Like I say, I’m not sure of that. It’s just how I figure it. They leave their bodies with just enough vitality to make a half-passable show and just sit around giggling, waiting and wondering how long it will be till you figure it out. Giving more and more hints that they’re not really there, making you curious about where the hell they went.”
The last thing I wanted was to be a mental patient again. To be dragged through all that shit. To face the prospect of a later but less pleasing ending. The last thing I wanted was to identify in any way with a body again, especially the one I had at times called me.
It would have been such a nice ending, but little by little, against every fiber of my will, my heroic marble features became more and more like putty, putty I was reluctantly forced to admit I could partly control. Little by little I became a mental patient again.
HOLLYWOOD, TAKE TWO. “The first time you were in here you were the Father. Now you’re the Son. Next time you’ll be the Holy Ghost and you won’t need me and my keys any more.” It was said affectionately. It was an orderly bringing me some food.
“Oh boy,” I said slowly, just shaking my head. “Oh boy, I’ve fucked up again.” Shrug.
“Oh boy,” he said, agreeing, nodding as he left.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.” I ate slowly. I didn’t have the faintest idea how I had gotten there but I knew where I was.
And then I wouldn’t know where I was or wouldn’t care or the place was some elaborate hoax or sinister plot, and back and forth several times a day for about a week.
Dr. Dale came into my little windowless seclusion room one day and asked if I’d like to see my mother. I figured he was just asking to torment me. Of course I wanted to see my mother, but even if I wasn’t dead and in hell or being kidnaped by Martians, even if I was a real patient in a real mental hospital, my mother was in Jamaica. And then alakazam he materialized my mother and she was hugging me and we were both sobbing and sobbing under Dale’s tight satanic grin. “That guy really is the devil.”
Our first few visits were fairly disjointed. I tried to explain what I thought was being done to me. They were draining my blood and replacing it with something else and changing the lines on my palms and…
My mother didn’t argue with any of my crazy notions and even elaborated a bit on the milder ones involving astrology and palmistry. My mother is one of the world’s greatest empathetic suspenders of disbelief.